Andrew Lloyd Weber's Obamita!

It has become impossible to ignore in these two weeks since January 20, 2009, that America got its own Eva Peron. The only differences are he’s not blond, he’s not as intelligent, and he’s more deluded about his abilities than Evita ever was.

It is only a matter of time before the White House is painted pink and we find this poseur standing on the balcony babbling through microphones about his descamisados. And the money kept rolling in from all directions.

Yes, Madame President reminds me eerily of an androgynous Eva-wannabe. Those repulsive pictures of him in a swimming suit revealed a fleshy not-quite-man emerging Boticelli-like from his seashell. That anyone could say that man is in good shape or is sexy or is manly would feel equally at home in North Korea flattering that ugly little retard known as Dear Leader.

America’s old-fashioned news outlets and their minions have “Gone the Goebbles,” as they say. This, of course, was inevitable when women began taking over the duties that belong to men. Also, college educated people really are the stupidest people on the planet, but none are stupider than journalism majors.

When the education establishment began dictating what constituted real journalistic standards, the end was in sight. It reminds one of the skit by Monty Python where John Cleese teaches sex to a class of boys. He actually has sex, but is so pedantic that the boys don’t pay a whit of attention. This is what education did to journalism.

Education robs people of common sense and natural instincts. Now, of course, tempering certain natural instincts is not such a bad thing, such as training people to be patient, but in the case of journalism the natural instinct to be on the side of truth and right and justice just got thrown under the bus. The angle became all important.

Well, this would have worked all right if the news consumers had been likewise changed, but they weren’t. We remain the same unwashed oafs we’ve always been, so we have drifted away from these people who purvey the news to us. The separation is coming upon us inexorably—and with greater accumulating speed than anyone ever imagined.

Do colleges and universities still take the money of the gullible young who want to “major in journalism”? I’m sure they do, but aren’t these schools duty-bound to tell these feckless girls (fully ninety percent of them are of that inclination) that they will never, repeat NEVER find a job that pays enough to make the rent on a ghetto flat? I’m sure they don’t. These colleges and universities should be hauled into court for swindling.

If these young journalists had any sense they would realize that prostitution in the old sense is more lucrative and less demeaning and requires less borrowed money to get established. News organizations today are not battle-hardened, cynical, hard-drinking men but rather sharp-jawed females from places like Brown and Cornell and Amherst bitter that they weren’t able to get any guys to fall for them.

That is why they are so enamored of the sexless bore we have elected for President, and why they are so willing to overlook the obvious. Watch tweener girls swooning over the latest heartthrob. This is a boy about as sexless and threatening as Michael Jackson (though not as scary facewise).

Reporterettes now find themselves writing stories for others just like themselves, though they haven’t clued in to the fact that the public is about ninety percent different from themselves. Of course we’re going to be repulsed by this drivel! And we’re going to tell them to go peddle their wares elsewhere.

I predict that talk radio is going to explode in the next two years as the cognitive dissidence escalates between the public and the news media. As they more stridently tell us that Evita-Obama is wise and articulate and intelligent and forceful and manly and womanly etc., real men and women are going to forsake them in droves.

It’s happening now. I predict that most of today’s newspapers will be out of business within two years. And then what will Obama Peron do to keep the public in line with the media? The media is going down. And only other media types will be wiping away tears with their crocodile hankies.

Schadenfreude will never feel so satisfying as when the NY Times finally prints its last edition. Millions of puppies will no longer be able to pee and poop on Paul Krugman’s and Maureen Dowd’s drivel.

And as they fall, so will the Fraud from Chicago fall as unceremoniously as the statue of Saddam Hussein. Like Evita, he’ll dispatch jack-booted thugs in grisly reprises of the 1930s and 1940s. Count on it. All fascists behave exactly the same way. Eva was one, Juan was one, and Obama is one.

The only difference is that he isn’t going to be able to offer up such a good show. He won’t wear his Adrians and Diors as well. And God help him and us if he ever quits smoking!

Oh, Dear Obamito(a), keep on puffing and preening. The time for such things is much more limited than it used to be.

Eden Needs Weedin'

To dismiss the Bible as a fairy tale with no divine inspiration is more wrong-headed than to accept it as literal truth in every detail.

Many people have an aversion to the Bible because of the often-warranted aversion to religion. The Bible and organized religions are not the same thing. The latter evolved from the former for a variety of reasons, not all of those reasons being holy, shall we say. The Bible should be studied and analyzed despite one’s adherence or abhorrence to a particular or to all religions.

Quick, now: Who asks the first question in the Bible, and what is the question?

The question doesn’t appear until the third chapter of Genesis. Declarative sentences plod one after another up until that time, delivering an uninspiring account of God’s creating everything.

It isn’t till the question is asked that the Bible suddenly gets off the history lesson and into a plot.

Give up? OK, the one who asks the question is the serpent, that slithery rascal that called Eden home, along with its new tenants. And the question he asks gets everything finally off static mode. Had he not posed this question, there would be no need to read the Bible any further.

The serpent asks Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” A simple request for clarification of what God had said. What could be more benign?

The Bible doesn’t say the serpent is Satan. It doesn’t even say that the serpent is evil, merely crafty, subtle. I’d say this is a metaphor for a lawyer. Significantly, the serpent never tells Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

The serpent taps into the human being’s doubt, which is the product of curiosity, but the serpent hasn't put curiosity into the woman. It is already there. And that means that God is the source of disobedience to Himself.

Why did God give man curiosity if it could lead, as it did so quickly, to disobedience? A bit perverse of Him, don’t you think?

Or, and this is what Solomon finds most intriguing, did God not know that when He created man just what all it was he had endowed him with? Let’s explore that idea by looking at the second question in Genesis.

It’s just a few paragraphs later, when God is walking through Eden in the cool of the day (Note: Was God subject to sunburn and discomfort in His own creation? He seems to have been a most short-sighted god if this is the case.), that God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”

I don’t think it uncharitable to point out that there are now six or so billion people on the planet whom God is supposed to be watching out for. However, when there were only TWO, he couldn’t keep track of them! Again, this does not speak well for His management acumen.

As almost all parents find out quickly: Creation is easy; control is impossible.

I think it would have been a lot easier to appear omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent in those early days than it would now, so it seems a big opportunity was missed by the Almighty. If He had really been supervising the writing of the Bible, He surely would have excluded the fact that He lost control of His creation really from the get-go.

The third question in the Bible follows quickly. Adam responds to God’s question that he was ashamed to meet God because he was naked, to which God angrily asks, “Who told you that you were naked?”

Now, isn’t this a curious response from the Mighty Father? I mean, who does God think COULD have told Adam he was naked? There are two, count them, two people on Planet Earth, but the language genie, as evidenced by the first question, was already out of the bottle and in the repertoire of three (Adam, Eve, serpent) and who knows how many else.

Had God already lost control of who would have language? Had He pulled off another creation somewhere else that He feared had gotten to Adam? Just who does He think slipped Adam the info that nakedness in humans is not to be endured on formal occasions, with the possible exception of entertainment award shows?

Now, of course, you could say that God is being rhetorical, is speaking for effect—after all, He has been known to throw some interesting tantrums. But then the question becomes an apostrophe to some higher force, just as prayer is affirming a belief in spiritual matter.

If God is being rhetorical, then what force is higher than He? This would be indicative that there is a power He is subject to, that He is not the be-all and end-all.

Then God asks the fourth Biblical question, directed to Eve. “What is this you have done?’ Now, that is like a parent walking into the midst of his child’s mess and yelling, “What have you done?” Isn’t it obvious?

Now, I think Eve should have defended herself a little more vigorously, though, this being the beginning of the world and without precedents, perhaps she didn’t know that the best defense is a good offense.

She should have thrown this right back into God’s face and told Him that He was responsible, since He wasn’t doing His godly duty of watching over His creations. Wouldn’t a little vigilance on God’s part at this incipient stage of human development been common sense?

From the very first, we have God taking a laissez-faire approach to creation and then throwing hissy fits when things don’t go as He hopes they will! Did He expect everything to go perfectly from the start? Boy, from someone who’s supposed to be omniscient, an awful lot goes under His radar.

With these four questions, we are able to come to an understanding that God, though powerful, is not all those “omni” words. Clever, mysterious, creative, vindictive, exasperating, and clueless—that’s our God. But not infallible. Not by a long shot.

It seems as if God is competent in His abilities to create, but that He becomes over-confident and overreaches when He creates man.

And just why does He create man? Well, the answer, not expressed in the Bible, is one of vanity, pride. God needs a being of rational intelligence and spiritual ability to be able to appreciate all this creation. God needs to be told how well He’s done.

So he effects the overreach of all creations—He duplicates Himself. Oh, He thinks He will have a creation that is innocent but aware, subservient yet powerful at the same time—but life is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates when He made man. He didn’t know what He was going to get! (No, no, Solomon knows that Forrest Gump didn't make man--this is just awkward grammar.)

His two apostrophizing questions to Adam and Eve are to the force that He is subject to—FATE. Oh, yes, God sells Himself as being beyond all forces, but He isn’t. Fate has always been His Achilles heel, and it trips Him up in what has been called OUR fall. “Our” indeed! It is God’s fall! Sucker punched by Fate.

He has created something LIKE His equals so they can appreciate His Brilliance. The problem is that we are so much like Him that there is only one thing more we need to be identical to Him. And if we get that last thing, there will be nothing separating US from HIM! Oh, the infamy. To be so powerful, and now to have to share equal billing with His own creations! What price vanity!

God must have been tasting a lot of bitter gall about then. He allows Himself to vent with a string of dire curses—among these Lamaze childbirth and non-mechanized farming—but then the Bible gives us the truly unique insight into His psyche. Everything you need to know about God and our creation is in the one and only incomplete sentence in the entire Bible.

Do you know that the only incomplete sentence is uttered by God Himself? Yes, it’s Genesis 3: 22. “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever--”

If we can live forever, we will be truly gods--and the secret is right there in Eden. But God becomes so horrified by this idea that He doesn't even finish His sentence. He knows that if man has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it won't take long for him to make a beeline to the tree of eternal life (don't you get the idea that God didn't plant this garden Himself?).

Faster than you can lock the door when people wearing suits and dresses are coming up your front walk, God closes Eden. He unceremoniously kicks Adam and Eve out, locks the gates to the place, and puts an unblinking, unchanging sentry to defend it, not to be confused with Joan Rivers.

Think of it, my fellow humans: We came THAT close to being gods ourselves, but He couldn’t take the competition. He took away our godlike status by keeping immortality for Himself. Well, sucks to be us, I guess, but that's why we invented medicine and science--we'll get back into that Garden, if not by the front door, maybe by the virtual one that we can conceive of. I think it's our Fate.

Well, we shouldn’t take God's vindictiveness too hard, I guess. I mean, every man whose son comes close to equaling his old man is duty-bound to sabotage the little whippersnapper. And we have this on the highest authority and from the best of sources that life has always been this way.

Remember the first commandment is to have no other gods before us, but we would all be gods if things had gone a little different back there at the dawn of creation. It would have made waiting in line impossible. Seems Someone wanted to have the number one position all to Himself. (If we were all gods, would there be any atheists?)

I wonder if the all-seeing eye has noticed that there are a helluva lot of people burrowing under the fences around Eden. Also, I wonder who's been doing the weeding in there in our absence. Surely you don't think He has!

Kill the Beast! Starve the Beast!

Sayonara, Washington…Mon Amour

Mistresses age. Alas! Though once-vibrant, they come to the inevitable time when they can’t stand the glare of day and must be craftily enhanced with exotic contents of paint pots rare. Charm becomes artifice, studied and calculated, where once it was natural and spontaneous and possibly real. There is a sad reminder in the flirtatious formulas of the faded doyennes—we are reminded that if vibrant vixens can decline, what indeed cannot!

And thus it is that goddesses of yesterday must stand aside for the new and fresh. A good mistress must know when to retire before retirement is forced upon her. It’s best to have it said “She had a good run” rather than “There’s a fine line between mistress and slut and, I’m afraid, she’s lost her balance.”

As Dryden says, “All human things are subject to decay,” and mistresses—and governments—must obey. And like a clinging woman, a concept can hang on too long—and the concept of the necessity of a government to have an actual capital city has had its run, at least for THIS republic.

You see, Washington, like the above-mentioned mistress, is a holdover from a time when a capital city was the only way to conduct governmental business in a representative democracy. But Washington, far from being essential to the lusty republic’s needs, is now a tarted-up whore of a place that is beyond embarrassing and outworn—she is absolutely destructive to the noble ends of her founders.

It is time for Washington to be retired.

In the 18th Century, the concept of representative democracy could ONLY occur if there were a capital city. No capital, no capitol, no meeting place. So our country grew up with the concept that a capital was essential. And so it was. Note the past tense, though.

But something called the 20th Century happened, and it created new ways of doing business, perfected now to the point that people don’t have to be anywhere near one another to have face-to-face meetings.

You know, it is hard to get your pocket picked by someone who isn’t near you. Well, the same could be said for the pack of thieves and reprobates who are our political class. If they can’t physically get together, the mischief they can work is just about completely undone. (I say “just about” because we must never underestimate the resourcefulness of politicians with law degrees.)

Note that I say that they “can’t” physically get together, and that is just what I propose—namely, that they are, once elected, forbidden from leaving their District until their term is up. When a man or woman wins election to serve a District, he/she is electronically braceleted and monitored 100% of the time. How’s that for a novel idea! We put them under our lock and key!

The person may receive visitors, but every visitor and that person’s conversation and interaction will be recorded and open for public inspection. Visitors to his/her home, likewise, will be monitored. In short, NO PRIVACY WHATSOEVER! For the full term of their “service.”

Now, politicians are fond of referring to themselves as “public servants.” Well, dammit, I say let’s start treating them as our servants, not as our betters. Sure, we can give them one or two weeks off a year, but we don’t allow them to leave the estate, in this case the District.

No more getting wined and dined and bribed and junketed and entertained and showered with perks, perks, perks. No more high-falutin’ balls and dinners in that rarefied moneyed honey pot called Washington. These people are going to be staying HOME! They better like the restaurants in their home District, because those are the only ones they can eat in for the duration of their term.

Voting will be done from their office via electronic means, and their vote will be made in full view of their constituents who care to make the drive downtown and watch and possibly confront the office holder.

We’re not a representative democracy if our politician is unavailable IN PERSON twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. What good is a “representative” who can only be reached by phone or e-mail (which can easily be ignored) or can only be seen in press releases?

If they have their voters sitting just feet away from them while they are debating, voting, holding hearings, and all the other official things they do, they’re not going to be able to get away with the shenanigans that they get away with now. Some of these people would get punched if their constituents could get to them. Well, with this system, they COULD get to them and they COULD, literally, punch the transgressing pol. Do I hear an “AMEN”?!

And wouldn’t that do our country good! (As well as our hearts!) True accountability! True representative democracy! Federal politicians would be forbidden, under penalty of five years of hard time in a federal lockup, to make any physical or clandestine contact with any other politician except the President.

The President would be the only politician allowed to reside in Washington or move about during his term. Senators (yes, ideally the Senate should be written out of the Constitution and every senator sent to do real work—they’d soon find that this House of Lords mentality doesn’t play well in the capitalistic workplace; however, for now, we’re stuck with them for the time being) would likewise have to stay within the borders of their states but remain out of physical contact with any other politician.

Politicians may contact one another by phone, e-mail, or carrier pigeon, but not face to face. But everything they do has to leave a trail that can be scrutinized, so we know who is trying to pull what scam on whom.

Yes, lobbyists can visit with their trench coats full of enticements, but their presence will be recorded and open to public viewing. No meetings behind closed doors. And, whereas lobbyists used to be able to score a gaggle of favors by just sashaying from one office to the next, now they are going to have to make unglamorous trips to seedy offices scattered all over this great land.

And what would happen to that city on the Potomac now that the politicians can’t go there? Washington would become a purely ceremonial city, used only when we need a backdrop for a ceremony, like the inauguration of the President or a State funeral. But otherwise, the Capitol can be open to tourists to gawk at where the corruption used to take place. We need monuments; we need ceremony. We just don’t need politicians getting together in their Coven of Cupidity and Rapacity.

And who would want to be a representative or senator then, you ask.
Do you see that if this plan is followed, you are going to get people in government who REALLY care about the people, because they’re going to be tooth-to-jowl with their constituents, unable to hide. And if you think the quality of politician would go down, then I have to ask where the hell you have been for the last fifty years. They CAN’T get worse!

I realize, of course, the property values in Washington, D.C. are going to fall precipitously, but nothing of any value will have been lost. Our government will function with total, and I mean TOTAL transparency, and the era of the career politician (meaning the one who REALLY knows how to take bribes and stiff the public) will be a thing of the past.

Thank you, technology, for giving us the means to finally free ourselves of the tyranny of our government. This will be the bloodless REVOLUTION that we are all so desperately craving. Cincinnatus, you can now return to your farm AND still be a public servant.

From now on, politicians had better like their home Districts and their constituents because that is all they’re going to have to keep them company for however many years they serve.

And here I address all you politicians: Just keep in mind that we really MEAN it! You’re going to serve us daily and really earn your keep! And you’re not going to get rich screwing us!

That will be the reward for our worthy mistresses.

The Sun'll Come Up To Maya

The Maya culture presents us with problems, much as a white-knuckled fist hurtling toward our nose by a perfect stranger presents us problems. We can close our eyes and just avoid the whole thing, but that is going to help us for all of a split second. And it will do us absolutely no good in trying to understand the situation.

Or we can actually strap on our big boy boots and make a stab at trying to understand this most mysterious aspect of our past.

I say let’s go for the latter.

First question: Where’d they come from? Well, of course, from Mesoamerica, but I mean the entire culture seems to have sprung into full-blown maturity without preliminaries.
Evolution that crosses species is just downright nuts, but evolution within species, and within man’s cultures, is absolutely correct. The technology of today didn’t just come into being over night but evolved, and those steps can be traced backward in time. Occasionally, cultural evolution gets a goose in the behind by the appearance of a genius (think Newton) or an accident (think discovery of penicillin), but in general, we march forward at a pretty steady, predictable pace.

But the culture of the Maya does NOT seem to have evolutionary roots. BAM! Here it is, full blown and amazing, and don’t ask any questions about how it got here. Now, I suppose that the evolutionary steps might have been present, might have involved a logical progression of steps toward an incredibly sophisticated science, architecture, and art, steps which have been lost in jungle humidity and rapacity, but to date nothing, not a single thing, has turned up that shows this evolution.

Did they, illogically, rip down all their previous attempts once a new piece of knowledge became clear, thus obliterating their evolution? I mean, one doesn’t just go from primitive jungle dweller pulling leaves over his head to protect himself from the rain to sophisticated architect and mason raising pyramids of incredible complexity. And surely one of those experiments would have been left standing. There HAS to be some intermediary step—but in the Mayan world, there isn’t.

Second question: Why is their representational art so similar to that of ancient Egypt’s? Granted that both societies raised monumental pyramids without any seeming communication or collaboration. And I can accept that two cultures that had absolutely no connection could just possibly end up building incredibly similar structures.

But that these two cultures would also produce representational art in exactly the same way beggars the imagination. Both the Maya and the ancient Egyptians presented the human figure exclusively in profile with non-realistic shoulder presentations—i.e., an alignment of head and body that is impossible in reality.

Yet, in both their three-dimensional art, there is a very realistic presentation. Both societies were able to create fantastic works of architecture and art and science, yet neither was able to utilize even rudimentary realistic perspective in one-dimensional presentation?

Were both societies blind to reality in the just the same way and did they create exactly the same kind of artistic mistake, or did they both share a similar artistic sensibility? If the former, I merely scoff. If the latter, then we have more than just pyramids in common.

Question three: How could a civilization as mathematically and astronomically advanced as the Mayas not have utilized the wheel?

If they made their own astronomical calculations, were they not aware that everything was running in a circular or elliptical pattern? And surely someone would have finally had a “Eureka!” moment when it became obvious that it would be easier and more efficient to use a round object to help move stones—and themselves. But apparently this moment never came.
There is nothing in their representational art or in the detritus of their remains to suggest that wheels were ever used.

Now, you may say that they didn’t have horses, so why would they have had chariots? True enough about the horses. But still—doesn’t the three-year old in his play, no matter what culture, find that moving things on round objects beats moving them by dragging?

I mean, a dislodged stone doesn’t slide down the mountainside—it rolls!

But this connection didn’t occur to a society so advanced that they could make incisions into the human skull and have the person survive.

Question four: Just what the hell happened to these people? The current explanation requires us to buy into eco-nonsense. The Mayas simply exhausted the natural resources; drought overtook tropical Central America, blah, blah, blah.

Sociologists would have us believe that their blood lust for human sacrifice made them vulnerable to resentment by outside forces or from within. Possible, of course, but without a scintilla of evidence.

And do people who have lived with and possibly created such monumental cities just drift away, en masse. If Detroit still exists, then so should the Mayan cities.

And are the poor people who claim to be remnants of the Mayan civilization (living now in squalor in Central America) really the descendants of what has to be a pinnacle of man’s brilliance. Wow, then there really IS a falling off that is beyond imagining! Could people really fall so far so fast and yet be so near?

I don’t have definitive answers for any of these questions (nor does anyone else, by the by, so my theories are as good as theirs). But I do know that the evolution of the Mayan culture is all backwards, just as is that of ancient Egypt. They both seem to have sprung into being, fully loaded, then languished, then precipitously declined and disappeared, all of which is contrary to natural evolution within cultures of our acquaintance.

Only an outside force (and I do not mean necessarily an alien force--though I certainly don't exclude an alien force) could have established such a culture. And that there are two cultures so similarly inclined but so geographically separated supports the theory that the knowledge that was imposed on these people was shared in common, though the homo sapiens were not.

From wreckage, there was a jump-starting of civilization by beings that had extraordinary knowledge. Man was new but the knowledge was old. Whoever or whatever implanted knowledge into the Egyptian and the Mayan culture was not of them, but was rather part of some other time, possibly place.

This force was trying to jump-start what it had known, what it knew, and was putting its knowledge and ideas into minds not evolutionarily ready to accept this knowledge.
Great structures were created, art was invented, mathematics and astronomy were thrown into minds barely evolved enough to grunt.

And it all probably worked for a bit. But it was all doomed to disintegrate, because it didn’t have natural evolution as its foundation.

And so we are left with monuments and knowledge that are, really ARE, impossible for the primitives to have created. Like monkeys conscripted to build a spaceship, early man was forced to waltz before he was able to crawl.

Then the brilliance of the Creators could only be sustained by mindless rituals and brute force—and our Creators were forced to watch the knowledge of the ages they'd so carefully saved from obliteration being devoured and destroyed by primitive beings knocking around in the temples of gods, not of reason but of incomprehension.

New knowledge would arise, but it would have to evolve naturally, through the painful trial and error that has marked mankind’s history since about 3000 BC.

Yes, we are reinventing that which our Creators already knew, but without that reinvention, it wouldn’t last, because it wouldn’t be ours.

The greatness of the time of the Creators ended, and they wanted it to go on, seamlessly, but rather than create a new human race that would take up where they left off, what they did was erect barriers to our understanding the past.

They left us mysteries, puzzlements, insoluble conundrums—and we have been trying to sort out those things, when we should have been getting on with things. They didn’t trust us to be able to discover things on our own.

Like parents who refuse to believe that their children will actually ever amount to anything, they gave us EVERYTHING—only to discover that all we really needed was a cardboard box and our imagination and a little time to grow into our brains.

Imagine ourselves, citizens ensconced in the computer age, where our every desire can be summoned effortlessly from the ends of the earth, being faced with the extinction of all our modern wonders. If a few of us survived, wouldn't we try to impart our wisdom and accomplishments to whatever intelligent race might be struggling to establish itself on this planet's bleak remains? And so we impart to them, DO for them, what they cannot imagine or do for themselves. How long will what we’ve set up last?

Well, give a library of the world’s greatest intellects to a bunch of six-year-olds, and see how much of it is left in twenty years.

The reason “Lord of the Flies” is such a disturbing book is that it shows us just how quickly and utterly all of our civilization can be, and will be, wiped out. The book has such a deus ex machina ending because it is obvious where this story is heading—into our unthinkable beginnings.
But that is where things must actually begin—and man with his reason will pull himself out of the blood swamp into the light. And if we try to speed it along, we will face the same frustration and anger of our Creators, who created not a fast track toward the top but rather a constant inexplicable diversion that pulls back to the past.

We would have been much further along by now if our Creators hadn’t tried to get us to move forward faster. Sad, so sad.

Tempest in a Slop Pot

Could The Tempest really be the work of Shakespeare, our Bard?

It is so awful in so many ways that, in Solomon’s opinion, there is no way this monstrosity could be anything more than a group effort that MAY possibly have had some minor posthumous input and contribution from the Great Man.

Solomon has never seen a serious challenge to the authorship of this play, but this comedy-fantasy-romance bears so little traces of a master’s hand that it is inconceivable that we should attribute it to the Master.

If the first-production date of 1611 is accurate, then this means that there is a seven years’ gap between the death of Edward de Vere, the real Shakespeare, and the appearance of this play. That there was so much time between his death and the first production of this play pretty much assures that there is little if any connection between The Tempest and Shakespeare.

In all respects, it seems like a vehicle created by and for a troupe of men to show off their favorite shtick; to give their work a whiff of respectability, they attributed it to Shakespeare, whom they may have worked with and whose work they certainly were familiar with. That they could get away with such a fraud seven years after his death, though, reinforces Solomon’s contention that the general public was unaware of who the real Shakespeare was. Think Clifford Irving fooling the world about Howard Hughes in OUR time, so such things are indeed possible.

Solomon was amused recently when he went through The Tempest with pen in hand to write down all the lines that he feels rise to the heights of Shakespearean greatness; then he compared his list to an Internet site that does the same. Solomon's list was less than half a handwritten page; theirs was just about every other line in the play. Obviously, we don’t agree. Someone here is very wrong, and it ain’t Solomon!

But more than a paucity of inspired language is the utter idiocy of the plot. If the name of “Shakespeare” were not associated with The Tempest, would anyone ever think this to be the work of a genius? The humor is sophomoric and cruel, the characters are one-dimensional, the plot hinges on magic and drunkenness and accidents. What’s to show genius here?

The Tempest is “proof” that Shakespeare created a successful hoax about his true identity that only insiders knew—and so his name was able to be exploited after his death. As far as the general public knew, he was still alive and writing. Solomon believes that anything after Macbeth is primarily, and probably wholly, someone else’s work.

The most connection that Shakespeare may have had to The Tempest, if there was any at all, was probably along the lines of a discarded sketch for an idea, some unused lines he may have tossed out, or some drunken ramblings in his later years remembered by acquaintances. His connection to what exists is undoubtedly tangential—and perhaps non-existent. Regardless, the work certainly bears neither his direct hand nor his imprimatur.

There’s nothing good, let alone classical, about The Tempest, and certainly no reason to treat it as if it is anything other than Jacobean ephemera. Those who refuse to acknowledge how obvious a forgery the thing is are of that type of people who pay outrageous sums for brand names--and refuse to see the “Made in China” tags on their Rolexes.

The Great Divide

The Great Divide

Trends come, trends go, but how on earth did we get to this point of in-your-face cleavage at every turn? And what does cleavage have to do with Shakespeare?

Ah, you see, Solomon believes there is a connection, and that connection has to do with the proliferation of these so-called Renaissance Faires. Now Solomon has nothing against people wanting to dress up in Elizabethan garb and imitate the Bard’s manner of speaking, but more than being a Shakespearean love fest, these things have become excuses for women to see how much of their comely (hopefully) bosoms they can expose.

In Solomon’s youth, the only women who showed cleavage were those zaftig matrons who had probably nursed a whole brood of kids and had a cleavage up to their chins. Collateral cleavage, so to speak. Occasionally when ladies going to a formal event would wear a gown with a slightly daring décolletage—but the children were in bed when the great divide stepped out.

But are the ladies bigger today than they were when Solomon went to school? He certainly didn’t know any girls who could or would if she could show cleavage. Alas. But today!!! How do the lads keep their minds on their studies?

Solomon attributes this increasing cornucopia, with cups no longer full but overflowing, to things like high fructose corn syrup and sodium fluoride and bottled water and cell phones. Whatever has caused this change in the female form, he can’t help but reflect on his country cousins of years gone by who competed in 4-H and county fairs to produce the “chicken of tomorrow,” chickens with breasts of unparalleled voluptuousness.

Apparently the chicken feed used then has found its way into the food chain for American women, for today America has mammaries the likes of which have never been in history—or at least this man’s history. And I used to read National Geographic!

But more puzzling than the cause of the increase of the size of our earliest sustenance is the increase in the acceptability of showing them off. It is now fully acceptable, perhaps laudable, to put them out there, cinched up, pushed out, quivering, trembling, barely contained, like two straining Rottweilers ready to burst their tethers.

Solomon supposes that we can blame or thank Shakespeare and Elizabethan times (at least the Renaissance Faire interpretation of these things), for ladies have used them as license to unleash their hounds to the very last millimeter of their permissibility and restraint. The understanding seems to be that in those olden days, the bonnie lasses showed the lusty laddies what they could expect with one mere yank of a bustier lace. And surely if this posturing were good enough for the Bard, then it’s good enough for us.

If a lady can give a rough approximation of Shakespearean manner of speaking—being able to recite the Paternoster in the King James style will do--then she is not immodest or provocative if she reveals what Solomon never saw as a youth, even at the beach. Fortunately, it is not necessary to pay admission to a Faire to see the heaving of the twin rotundities. Women who once dressed as if there were such a thing as modesty now come at us as if she has put two state capitals in her top. Solomon suggests assuming that she wants to give you a lesson in classical architecture and you had better pay attention.

Now, Solomon is always a gentleman who knows that it is fun but not at all nice or polite to stare into on-coming headlights. But since knickknack shelves have become continental shelves and since titillation has become advertisement, he says, “Gentlemen, start your engines! Look to your heart’s content. Look as if sharia law is going to be imposed soon.”

And if she takes offense, then tell her, in your best Shakespearean accent, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

The Charmed Pot: Sonnet 76

The Charmèd Pot

Let’s take a look at Sonnet 76, one of those more mysterious gems:

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

Now, Solomon has always suspected that Shakespeare used some substances to help him with that old imagination factor that his outré language sense required. But Solomon does not think the Bard confined his indulgences to mere alcohol.

You see, Sonnet 76 mentions “a noted weed” that he keeps invention in. What on earth was he referring to? And in Macbeth, the famous ingredients of the witches’ potion are thrown in “the charmed pot,” and then, lo and behold, a hallucinogenic vision emerges.

Now, do we really think this is all just coincidence? That such musings are merely the product of OUR over-active imaginations, perhaps even a projected wish-fulfillment? Solomon thinks not. He thinks that our Bard did indeed indulge himself with smoking or ingesting the loco weed, and Sonnet 76 is his announcement of this fact.

Let’s not forget that an intellect as profound as his was surely capable of disguising the meaning of what he was saying, of inserting sly, overt, but ambiguous references to his peculiar little vices. And he surely would have delighted in parading his sins in front of the entire world with the knowledge that, though his sins could be seen by all, they could be proved by none.

Solomon believes that all geniuses of wit indulge in this perverse game. He is remind of one of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous stories, “The Purloined Letter.” In this old detective story, the police must find a letter that they know is in an apartment, but, after ripping the place apart, they cannot find. It is up to M. Dupin, Poe’s detective, to deduce that sometimes the best way to hide something is to put it right in front of your nose. In this case, the letter is right on the mantle, a place so obvious that it is overlooked.

Solomon believes that Shakespeare hid things—his identity, his sins, his peccadilloes—in plain sight where no one could possibly think to find such things. Surely “compounds strange” are other drugs that he would have had access to but chose not to use, sticking with his “noted weed.”

If disreputable drug use is laid out for us, what else might be sitting right in front of us? What other sins of the master are laid bare for us to see, if only we task ourselves to admit that the possibility that presents itself is really there? Our bard was nothing if not vain, arrogant, and so cocksure of his superior intellect that he could not only walk on the edge of the moral parapet but dance on it and not fall off.